Thiel Owners

"Thanks! for sharing your impressions and experiences- catalysis what gear, including cabling, are your using in your system?"

Benchmark DAC2 HGC, Bridged Adcom GFA 555II’s, Benchmark star quad interconnects. Canare star quad speaker cable. I have the 3.5 equalizer permanently in circuit. All components connected via Adcom Ace Enhancer.

Contrary to some people’s experience with Adcoms and Thiels, I don’t find the sound presentation sound harsh at all. I think that is helped by the very high quality dac which means the Adcoms are amplifying a very pure and accurate signal. I also agree with others that toe in should be absolutely minimal for best treble resolution.

Despite Thiel’s comments that these speakers aren’t very critical to position, I find that they benefit enormously from experimentation. Even two inches less toe in can bring big contrasts in sound presentation. I do have to wonder how many owners dismissed them as harsh without playing around with them in their music rooms?

My own take is that the tweeter has quite wide dispersion characteristics and any attempt to over focus treble direction, for example pointing directly at the listener position, essentially takes them out of Jim’s intended design window.

Excellent! catalysis

yes, very minimal (read none) toe in, on these speakers.

^ideally little to none, but if one has a difficult room with speakers close to the side walls it might be better to add more toe in.

Previous speakers in my listening room had always benefited from quite fierce toe in, essentially with the tweeters pointing at my ears. With the Thiels it’s totally different. They don’t sound bad in that configuration, but it does compress their ultra impressive sound staging, plus the treble is far better integrated with the other drivers when in a more or less flat set up. I have about an inch of toe in just to channel the sound away from the side walls.

Essentially I’m in heaven with how they sound.

While led they do plunge Stygian depths of bass, the sound is still lean when it needs to sound lean. In other words there appears to be zero cabinet coloration. To my ears the 3.5s have the sound I was chasing with electrostatics, but with all the dynamism they lack. Just superb.

Thanks! again- catalysis

upon my 1st demo session w/ the CS 2.4, I was instantly struck by its very rich sound (timbre) and presentation. I was fortunate enough to listen to those speakers on a 3-month work assignment. I am became a believer and awaited until a pair of CS 2.4SE came along for purchase.

Happy Listening!